U.S. economy created fewer new jobs in 2025-2026, it turns out. Just how bad was it?

By Jeffry Bartash

'Low-hire, low-fire' labor market means jobs are harder to find

President Donald Trump last year fired the head of the agency that compiles the monthly U.S. employment report.

The economy created slightly fewer jobs from the spring of 2025 to the spring of 2026 than originally reported, new government figures show, leaving intact an image of a sluggish labor market in which hiring was unusually slow.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics previously had reported that a paltry 273,000 new jobs were created between March 2025 and March 2026.

Now the agency said job creation during the one-year period was overstated by a combined 79,000, putting the increase at just under 200,000.

Normally these annual updates don't get much attention. Yet the downward revisions were so large and negative in 2024 and 2025 that they became a source of political controversy.

The large size of the revisions played a role in President Trump's unprecedented decision in August 2025 to fire the BLS commissioner. He accused her without evidence of manipulating the data to overcount new jobs to try to help Democrats win elections.

A new commissioner nominated by Trump, Brett Matsumoto, took office earlier this month.

The new BLS estimate doesn't alter the picture of what economists call a "low-hire, low-fire" labor market. It first took shape in the final year of the Biden presidency and continued into the first few years of the Trump White House.

The BLS update was derived by crosschecking prior monthly employment estimates with business tax records to get a more precise tally of how many new jobs were created. The agency fine-tunes its employment estimates every year.

Private-sector economists believe the chief source of the errant BLS job estimates in 2024-25 were the result of the agency undercounting a record surge in immigrants during the Biden presidency.

A decline in immigration since Trump became president again may have contributed to the small downward revision in employment growth in the period covering March 2025 to March 2026.

Every year, the BLS revises its employment estimates after examining state tax records on businesses that cover 95% of all workers.

The monthly BLS employment report, on the other hand, is assembled from much smaller polls of households and companies instead of actual tax records.

The monthly employment data are available almost immediately. State tax records are only available months after each quarter ends.

The final estimate of employment growth from March 2025 to March 2026 will be published early next year.

-Jeffry Bartash

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08-28-26 1126ET